laelaps | May 31, 2009
A red fox (Vulpes vulpes), photographed at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
I just got back from Delaware a few hours ago, and overall it was a pretty good trip. I did not see the swarms of mating horseshoe crabs I was looking for, but I did see a number of other cool critters. This mangy fox, for instance, came trotting out from behind the dunes right about sunset and appeared to be looking for a few tidbits. My only regret is that I did not have my more powerful flash with me, as most of the fox photos came out a bit blurry. I do like this one, though.
laelaps | May 29, 2009
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
This weekend I'm headed off to see the annual breeding explosion of horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) in Delaware Bay. During late May and early June, especially during the full and new moon, scores of the invertebrates with shield-shaped carapaces pile onto the beach to breed, and all those eggs provide a smorgasbord for migratory birds. I never would have guessed that such a natural spectacle occurred just a few hours away.
This will be my second attempt to see the horseshoe crab mating…
laelaps | May 29, 2009Welcome, new readers. Thanks for sticking around after all the excitement over "Ida" last week. You can expect plenty more posts on strange mammals, odd evolutionary hypotheses, and new peer-reviewed research in the near future, but if you just can't wait, check out a list of some of my "greatest hits" posted by sbh of Rational Rant. I was definitely flattered to receive such praise, and I don't think I could have made a better list myself (although I would include my essays on "Giant Killer Lungfish From Hell").
laelaps | May 29, 2009
An Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.
laelaps | May 28, 2009
Saartje Baartman, drawn from a wax cast made in Paris. From The Human Race.
On December 31, 1816 Saartje Baartman died in Paris. She had been ill for three days, perhaps stricken with smallpox, before she and her unborn child expired. Better known as the "Hottentot Venus", Baartman was a tragic celebrity in Europe. She was a dark-skinned member of the Khoikhoi tribe of South Africa*, and she had buttocks so large that they mesmerized Europeans. Despite her intelligence and talent with languages she was treated as a sideshow attraction, considered to be the antithesis of the European…
laelaps | May 28, 2009The folks at 3quarksdaily have just announced that they are going to award three prizes (called, appropriately enough, quarks) to some of the best examples of science blogging on the web. All you have to do is pick out your favorite blog post written sometime between May 24, 2008 and now and submit it in the comments. The submission process will be open until midnight on June 1, 2009, shortly followed by the opening of public voting. Then six finalists will be selected from which the winners will be chosen by Steven Pinker.
If you have any favorite Laelaps posts please feel free to submit…
laelaps | May 28, 2009
A herring gull (Larus argentatus) takes off. Photographed at Spring Lake, New Jersey.
laelaps | May 27, 2009
The "Hesperopithecus" tooth discovered by Harold Cook.
I could see it coming from a mile away. As soon as I heard all the hype surrounding "Ida", the exceptionally preserved specimen of Darwinius announced last week, I knew creationists would soon be citing our old friends "Archeoraptor", "Piltdown Man", and "Nebraska Man" as reasons not to trust evolutionary scientists. Each was a public embarrassment to scientists, that is true, but there is no reason to sweep these mistakes under the rug. Each can tell us something valuable about the way science works and how scientists interact with…
laelaps | May 27, 2009
A group of sandpipers fleeing from an incoming wave. Photographed at Spring Lake, New Jersey.
laelaps | May 26, 2009
The skull of a tarsier, from The Descent of Primates.
At the turn of the 20th century evolutionary biologists faced a significant problem. In 1859 Charles Darwin had expounded the mechanism of evolution, and Eugene Dubois' discovery of "Pithecanthropus" (known as Homo erectus today) illustrated that humans had evolved over time, but the broad outline of human evolution was almost entirely a mystery. There was no doubt that we had evolved from some ancient group of primates, but one of the most frustratingly difficult to resolve questions was what our earliest primate ancestors were like.…
laelaps | May 26, 2009There has been a lot of moving and shaking going on at ScienceBlogs lately. Not only have we welcomed two new library science bloggers (Christina's LIS Rant and Confessions of a Science Librarian, welcome), but three of my favorite bloggers have left the Sb community. John Lynch (Stranger Fruit, now a simple prop), John Wilkins (Evolving Thoughts), and Afarensis have headed off to new corners of the blogohedron. They will be sorely missed here, but update your links and bookmarks so you can continue to read their excellent work.
laelaps | May 26, 2009I broke the news via my Twitter feed last night, but in case you missed it my op-ed "The dangerous link between science and hype" has been published in today's Times. I will give you one guess as to what it is about.
laelaps | May 25, 2009
During the first Congressional hearing on the IPCC report on human-induced climate change in 2007 Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher floated a rather unusual idea. Citing warmer global climates of the distant past, like that which dominated the Eocene about 56 to 34 million years ago, Rohrbacher implied that the current warming trend was just the symptom of a natural phenomenon. If past warming events were triggered by unknown causes, Rohrabacher suggested "dinosaur farts" as the cause of the Eocene hothouse, then perhaps present rises in temperatures had nothing at all to do with…
laelaps | May 25, 2009It has been nearly a week since Darwinius, a 47-million-year-old primate heralded as the "missing link", burst on the public scene. (See some of my previous posts about the fossil here, here, and here.) Nicknamed "Ida", the fossil has already spurred comments from nearly all corners of the science blogohedron, but with documentaries about her airing tonight (USA) and tomorrow (UK) there is still plenty to talk about.
That's why I am organizing a one-time-only blog carnival all about Ida. Whether you want to tackle the media hype, the more technical aspects of her discovery, or something else…
laelaps | May 25, 2009
A pair of calves (Bos primigenius taurus), photographed in suburban New Jersey (close-up).
laelaps | May 24, 2009
A white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), photographed in suburban New Jersey (close-up).
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laelaps | May 23, 2009
The skeleton of an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History.
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laelaps | May 22, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
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It has been three days now since an international team of paleontologists promised to deliver the change we need change everything, but when I woke up this morning I was pleased to find that things had still not gone "Bizarro World" around here. There is still a lot going on with Darwinius (better known as "Ida"), though, and while I am sure we will still be talking about her for some time to come I wanted to take a moment to step back and answer a few questions that keep cropping up about this…
laelaps | May 22, 2009
The skull of Smilodon, photographed at the AMNH's "Extreme Mammals" exhibit.
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